Published in The Mathematical Gazette, 96(535), March 2012, pp. 78-81.

All rights reserved by the Mathematical Association, http://www.m-a.org.uk/jsp/index.jsp?lnk=620

Generalizing a problem of Sylvester

MICHAEL DE VILLIERS
Mathematics is not a book confined within a cover and bound between brazen clasps, whose contents it needs only patience to ransack; it is not a mine, whose treasures may take long to reduce into possession, but which fill only a limited number of veins and lodes; it is not a soil, whose fertility can be exhausted by the yield of successive harvests; it is not a continent or an ocean, whose area can be mapped out and its contour defined: it is limitless as that space which it finds too narrow for its aspirations; its possibilities are as infinite as the worlds which are forever crowding in and multiplying upon the astronomers gaze. - James Joseph Sylvester quoted in Stewart, I. (2010). Hoard of

Mathematical Treasures, Profile Books: London, p. 98.

The Euler line of a triangle is mostly valued, not for any practical application, but purely as a beautiful, esoteric example of post-Greek geometry. Much to the authors surprise, however, he recently came across the following result and theorem by the British mathematician James Joseph Sylvester (1814-1897) in [1] that involves an interesting application of forces that relate to the Euler line (segment). This result is also mentioned in [2] without proof or reference to Sylvester. Theorem of Sylvester The resultant of three equal forces OA, OB and OC acting on the circumcentre O of a triangle ABC, is the force represented by OH, where H is the orthocentre of the triangle. Given the remarkable analogy between the nine-point circle and Euler line on the one hand, and that of the Spieker circle and Nagel line on the other hand, as discussed in [3], [4] and [5], it was not surprising when checking with Sketchpad to find that the following analogous result is also true. Nagel segment theorem The resultant of three equal forces IA, IB and IC acting on the circumcentre I of a triangle ABC, is the force represented by IN, where N is the Nagel point of the triangle. Reflecting on (and proving) why the result was true in both cases, led the author to the following further generalization, which includes the above two as special cases.

Published in The Mathematical Gazette, 96(535), March 2012, pp. 78-81. All rights reserved by the Mathematical Association, http://www.m-a.org.uk/jsp/index.jsp?lnk=620

Generalization The resultant of three forces PA, PB and PC acting on any point P of a triangle ABC, is the force represented by 3PG, where G is the centroid of the triangle.

Figure 1 Proof Consider Figure 1. By completion of the parallelogram of forces, the resultant of forces PB and PC is PD. Similarly, completing the parallelogram AQDP, we find PQ as the resultant of the forces PA and PD. But it is well known that the median triangle A'B'C' is similar to ABC and that a halfturn around G and a dilation with scale factor 1/2 maps ABC onto A'B'C'. Now note that A'P = 1/2 AQ and that since A'P and AQ are parallel, they are equally inclined towards the respective sides of triangles A'B'C' and ABC. Hence, P and Q are in the same relative positions with respect to the similar triangles A'B'C' and ABC. Thus, a halfturn around G and a dilation with scale factor 1/2 also maps Q onto P, and it follows that PQ = 3PG. Q.E.D.

Published in The Mathematical Gazette, 96(535), March 2012, pp. 78-81. All rights reserved by the Mathematical Association, http://www.m-a.org.uk/jsp/index.jsp?lnk=620

As is often the case, this generalization is not original as the author later found it mentioned without proof in [6] and attributed to Alison in 1885 [7]. However, what is not mentioned in [6] is, that due to the half-turn relationship between ABC and A'B'C', the general result also applies, with only slight modifications, if the three forces acting on P are P A', P B' and P C', and is left to the reader to verify. Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, the result generalizes in exactly the same way to any quadrilateral as follows.

Figure 2 Quadrilateral generalization The resultant of four forces PA, PB, PC and PD acting on any point P of a quadrilateral ABCD, is the force represented by 4PG, where G is the centroid of the quadrilateral. Proof Consider Figure 2. In general, the centroid of any quadrilateral ABCD is defined as the centre of similarity G between ABCD and ABCD where C, D, A and B are the respective centroids of triangles ABD, ABC, BCD and CDA (and ABCD maps onto ABCD with a dilation -1/3, i.e. a halfturn and a reduction by 1/3) [8].

Published in The Mathematical Gazette, 96(535), March 2012, pp. 78-81. All rights reserved by the Mathematical Association, http://www.m-a.org.uk/jsp/index.jsp?lnk=620

According to the general theorem for a triangle above, the resultant for the three forces PB, PC and PD is PE = 3 PA. By completion of the parallelogram of forces PAQE the resultant of all four forces is therefore given by PQ. But since AP is parallel and equal to 1/3 AQ, it follows that P and Q are in the same relative positions with respect to the similar quadrilaterals ABCD and ABCD. Thus, a halfturn around G and a dilation with scale factor 1/3 also maps Q onto P, and it follows that PQ = 4PG. Q.E.D. Using the general, geometric theorem and definition of the centroid of any polygon from [8]: Given a n-gon A1 A2 A3 ...An (n 3), then the centroids of the (n-1)-gons,
' ' ' A1 A2 A3 ...An !1 , A2 A3 A4 ...An , etc. that subdivide it, form a n-gon A1' A2 A3 ...An similar to the

1 , while the centre of similarity is the centroid n "1 ! of the original n-gon, its now easy to see that the following interesting result is true for
original n-gon with a scale factor of " any polygon (and can be proved by mathematical induction). ! Polygon generalization The resultant of n forces PA1 , PA2 , ..., PAn acting on any point P of a polygon A1 A2 A3 ...An (n 3) is the force represented by nPG, where G is the centroid of the quadrilateral.

! Further reflections
1) A few days after submission of the above paper, the author suddenly thought again of the general result while driving to practice tennis, and found the following trivial proof while driving. If we use coordinates (or vectors), placing the origin at the point P, then the resultant of all the forces is the sum of all the x and y coordinates of the forces respectively, and by definition of the centre of gravity, G is located at the point (sum of xcoordinates)/n, (sum of y-coordinates)/n, from which the result immediately follows! More over, it is immediately clear that the same result would hold in space by the same argument! 2) Somewhat later, the author managed to find a copy of Alisons original paper [7], and perhaps not surprisingly, after proving the general case for a triangle somewhat differently, Alison extends it to the case for a tetrahedron, and then generalizes it further

Published in The Mathematical Gazette, 96(535), March 2012, pp. 78-81. All rights reserved by the Mathematical Association, http://www.m-a.org.uk/jsp/index.jsp?lnk=620

to n points in space. So the interesting generalization above is not new at all, but unfortunately seems not to be well known. References 1. H. Drrie, 100 Great Problems of Elementary Mathematics: Their history and solution, translated by D. Antin, Dover Publications, New York, NY, (1965), p. 142. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. D. Wells, The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Geometry, Penguin books, London, (1991), p. 32. J.L. Coolidge A Treatise on the Circle and the Sphere, Chelsea Publishing Company, Bronx, NY, (1971, original 1916), pp. 53-57, R. Honsberger, Episodes in Nineteenth & Twentieth Century Euclidean Geometry, The Mathematical Association of America, Washington, (1995), pp. 7-13. M. de Villiers, Generalizing the Nagel line to Circumscribed Polygons by Analogy and Constructive Defining, Pythagoras, 68, (Dec 2008), pp. 32-40. R.A. Johnson, Advanced Euclidean geometry (Modern geometry), New York, Dover Publications, New York, NY, (1960, original 1929), p. 251. 7. 8. J. Alison, Statical proofs of some geometrical theorems, Proceedings of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society, IV, (1885), p. 58-60. I.M. Yaglom, Geometric Transformations II. Washington, DC: The Mathematical Association of America, (1968).

MICHAEL DE VILLIERS School of Science, Mathematics & Technology Education, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa e-mail: profmd@mweb.co.za Homepage: http://dynamicmathematicslearning.com/homepage4.html Dynamic Geometry Sketches: http://dynamicmathematicslearning.com/JavaGSPLinks.htm